Prepare to be shocked, youngsters.

Here’s how old I am:

I remember when Banana Republic sold nothing but faux-safari clothing.

In college, my boyfriend was a computer science major, and I witnessed a rudimentary form of instant messaging between him and another student, someone not even in the room. I thought it was some kind of black magic.

I grew up believing that Charles Nelson Reilly and Paul Lynde were skirt-chasing bachelors.

My first job out of college? I used a manual typewriter. Which may be why I quit after one and a half days.

The television I had growing up was made out of rock, and it was powered by a pterosaur.

Your turn.

Comments

[Chookooloonks]

Dude, when I was young?

- I remember getting our first microwave. That was insane -- food cooked in SECONDS!

- I remember hotly debating that Cyndi Lauper would far outlast Madonna

- Our television "remote control" was tethered to the TV by this long-ass wire that spanned the room

- Michael Jackson was BLACK.

[Sarah Pond]

I am so old that when I was a little kid we got a COLOUR! TV!

We had to get up and turn a dial on the tv to change channels. This is why it was best to sit as close as possible to the screen.

A digital watch and a digital calculator were the HEIGHT! OF! TECHNOLOGY!

I am so old that rock and roll music was actually alternative when I was a kid.

[Lori L.]

The biggest argument I ever witnessed between my parents was whether or not to buy a VCR. My Dad thought it was a fad, and a huge waste of money.

Oh, and all I wanted for my tenth birthday was an electric typewriter. That poor piece of machinery was witness to serious teenage angst!

[Bikini]

We played our music on a reel-to-reel machine. PRE-8-TRACK, baby!

My first video game was a handheld Battlestar Galactica game in which you moved your red dot back and forth to avoid other red dots. And it was AWESOME. I think it required 3 D batteries to run.

[Carrie (in MN)]

I'm so old...

- I remember when "Big Yellow Taxi" was a Joni Mitchell song, not a Counting Crows song.

- I have experienced writing an entire page on my typewriter, getting to the end and realizing I hadn't left enough room for my footnotes, and thus having to type the whole page over again.

[~moe~]

Our parents had a tradition that you got two big gifts during two transitional phases in life - one when you turned 16, the other at high school graduation.

I picked a typewriter for my first present. I still own it and still use it on occasion. (I got luggage for graduation). When I got to college, I was the only one in the entire dorm that had a typewriter and knew how to use it.

I was very popular when people were filling out random applications for grad school or scholarships (which had to be typed but weren't online like they are today...in fact, I don't think online was even a term then).

[CC]

OKAY... when I was young we got a Beta Max Video recorder...and it cost a FORTUNE!!!! And, ANita Bryant was hawking orange juice!

[Jessica]

I remember being in ballet class when someone brought in a Michael Jackson poster. I observed, "it's the duty of a young girl to pretend to fall head over heels for this joker."

And, I thank my lucky stars that Marky Mark had left the skater rally before I ended up with my own personal pair of boxers.

[trish]

calculators were HUGE and only did basic math

[ChasingSanity.com]

I remember my sister buying cheap Michael Jackson crap. Remember when his hair caught on fire with the Pepsi commercial? That ruled!

[Cincy]

Why, I remember punch cards used by the computer science revolutionaries when I was in college...I saw the Bradys and the Partridges when they ORIGINALLY aired...We had a Polaroid black & white Swinger(!)...and then a Betamax. Google that, you mere infants, you.

[Sprite's Keeper]

Who's Paul Lynde?
:-)
Your turn.

[Kizz]

Paul Lynde as the center square on the Hollywood Squares.

Taping songs onto cassette off the radio.

My mother still has a rotary dial phone.

I remember when Pong came out on Atari.

[susannah aka petunia face]

Great post.

I am so old I remember buying candy bars for a quarter.

The big thing for birthday parties was to rent a VCR. Nobody actually had one of their very own.

That's Incredible! was the only reality show on tv. And it was actually incredible.

[Katie Ann]

When I was young Pluto was a planet and a brontosaurus wasn't an apatosaurus. (Ha, see, even the Firefox spell check doesn't recognize that word.)

/Is only 23 and has little to contribute here.

[Assertagirl]

Some of the kids I work with at the restaurant were like, two years old when Beverly Hills, 90210 was originally on the air.

[rhk]

LOL at the comment above about the argument whether to get a VCR. My Dad was vehemently against us having a stereo and a Sony Walkman (cassette tapes!) because they were redundant and the Walkman thing was a passing fad.

I thought *I* was the only one who remembered that about Banana Republic! Too funny!

How about the days before Called ID, when you could do *69 to automatically call back whoever had just called you and hung up? I also had to really go to bat to convince my parents to get us call-waiting.

[Sarah]

We had a BetaMax VCR, and my weekly allowance was 40 cents, because that was the price of a candy bar. I remember telling my sister that I really, really wanted a peach-colored tunic-and-leggings outfit at the mall, and that it would take me forever to save up for it at 40 cents a week!

[wookie]

I also owned a manual typewriter. I also remember and used instant messaging through those "black magic" commands. I remember feeding punchcards into the computer. I have programmed by typing Hexadecimal codes into the computer.

I had a 56k modem when I first moved out of the house, and my computer had a 286 processor.

[hi kooky]

In our college dorm, there was ONE rotary dial phone in the hallway for the entire floor.

Yes, the Betamax here too.

$35 could get you a sweet pair of well-made penny loafers, perfect for jr. hi dances.

Prairie skirts were HOT. So was Nair.

My dad had a CB radio in our family sedan.

[MissusB]

I remember when Mr. Potato Head only had the one look. And he hadn't met the Missus yet.

I used to read Seventeen magazine when it was actually written for 17 year olds.

[Carrie]

"I want your sex" by george michael played on the radio in H.S. and it was SCANDALOUS!

I didn't understand what it meant that Jack Tripper was pretending to be gay so he could live with two women on Three's Company.

Mix tapes were actually made on TAPES!

I remember people joking about an ACTOR running for president.

[Nothing But Bonfires]

I remember laser discs. Do you remember laser discs? Sadly, they were so short-lived! They looked like a very, very large DVD and you played them in.....a laser disc player, I guess. Oh, and minidisc players! The pre-cursor to iPods! All this early-to-mid 90s technology was so.....sweetly hopeful.

[Meegan]

I saw Star Wars in the theater.

My mom taught a macrame class. And people took it!

I remember where I was when Reagan was shot.

Two words. Martha Quinn.

[karen]

Memos and interoffice envelopes ... that was it. Every thought typed out as an Interoffice Memorandum, cc: Everyone (cc = carbon copy or uppity folks used xc for Xerox copy), initial, make copies, put in manilla file, originals in interoffice mail envelopes. Heh heh. Remember racing to the bank every payday before direct deposit?? Whha hah ha. No ATMs. No cells. Walkmans that played ... cassettes? Remember when you had to actually walk to the TV to change the channel ... all 3 channels? Ahh those were the good o' days ...

[a]

I learned to type on a manual typewriter. My second grade teacher thought the bicentennial celebrations were a moment in history that we absolutely shouldn't miss.
I loved Match Game! And Charles Nelson Reilly was the most interesting guy on it!

[Heather G]

My mother making this gelatine solid thing in a tray that she then used to make carbon copies of her Girls Brigade (scouts?) newsletters.

My first boss banning computer mice as he believed they were only used for games.

Remember when the only people who wore ear bud things were listening to transitor radios either to keep up with the cricket or because they were trying to drown out the voices in their heads.

[Lisa]

We had a party line.

Our first VCR weighed 100 pounds and looked like a cassette player on 'roids, and you could only record a show while you watched it.

Wizard of Oz was only on once a year.

[Brian]

I'm so old, I used put my name on a sign-in sheet at my high school's only computer just to play 15 minutes of "Hunt the Wumpus." And it was awesome.

[cartoongoddess]

Back then, Banana Republic didn't have storefronts. Catalog only.

I was trying to explain an IBM Selectric to my 6-yr-old daughter the other day. Specifically, how excited we were that we finally had electric typewriters.

In my earlier days as a production artist (for newspapers and magazines), there were no computers. Stuff was printed out of a typositor, waxed and the galley was pasted onto mechanical boards (which we were paid to create). Photostats of the boards had to be shot for the printers.

[Big Mama]

I remember the day we got cable as the greatest day of my childhood and proceeded to watch Grease 252 times over the next two weeks.

Also, I remember someone showing me email in college and I told them it would never take off as a form of communication because the addresses were too long.

[suburbancorrespondent]

This is great. I remember the controversy surrounding Walkman - how it impeded social interaction and what was this world coming to, anyhow?

I saw Star Wars in the theater, also.

My friend's mother rented a reel-to-reel movie projector to show us a movie at her birthday slumber party.

I thought I was lucky because I had a phone extension in my room.

[tulip]

hee. I'm so old I WORKED at Banana Republic when they sold faux safari junk!
I'm also so old that when I worked on my high school newspaper (yeah look that one up kids!) we still had to actually CUT (with an exacto knife) and PASTE (with GLUE) copy. Yes kids that's right that's why it's called cut and paste. :)

[Sher]

I just knew Rock Hudson was a swaggering bachelor... who probably went to wild bachelor type parties with the likes of Paul Lynde and Charles Nelson Reily.

[E]

We owned an Apple II+. I think we paid over $2000 for it.

I watched MTV (back when they played only videos) for over twelve hours straight one day simply in hopes of seeing a Michael Nesmith video again. Michael Nesmith! I know.

I watched The Nashville Network nightly because it was one of the few cable channels we got. Urgh.

[Dave]

I was the only kid in my 6th grade class to own a digital watch. It got me the plum job of pushing the button that rang the recess bells.

It played twelve different songs. I loved that damn thing.

[wanderlusting]

I was 15 when I saw the Beatles-yea, the Fab 4 in downtown Houston,Tx. at the coliseum I believe. My bf's father took us and dropped us off and picked us up when it was over. girls, were screamin' their asses off. It was great.

[Lasha]

I remember when I wanted to make copies of anything, I had to type or print on those double sheets with the purple stuff in between, and they had to be copied on "ditto" machines." (My dad was a school principal . . . hours of weekend fun.)

I also remember those sticker labels you could make by "punching" the letters and they would come out on red tape with raised white letters.

But when you wrote about the faux safari stuff at Banana Republic, it made me think of the short lived Coconut Joe with really tacky safari prints and neon shirts!

[shirky]

in college, this was before the internet and before facebook, we had an actual paper book called a face book! IT'S TRUE!

[Kaza]

Okay, the Charles Nelson Reilly & Paul Lynde thing is hilarious, b/c I was just telling my husband that I grew up having NO idea they could possibly be gay. NO CLUE. As for mine, a friend's father was one of the inventors of the first compact discs. I refused to believe him when he told me his dad said they would replace our beloved albums, 45s, and cassette tapes.

[Email From The Embassy]

My son just got an iPod for Christmas. He stared in open-mouthed wonder as I described my first walkman. Remember how they were so heavy that when you tried to attach them to your shorts to go rollerskating (not rollerblading), they'd pull your pants down or just fall off? And they were always skipping. But they were So Cool! Music you could take with you...

[Pretty Jane]

I rocked at Pong.

I was outraged when BR put COLOR in their safari t-shirt line. SO lame.

I had jelly bracelets, but my mom said no to jelly shoes.

When I came home from high school, I'd tune in to see if they were playing that brand-new "Bad Medicine" video.

[Pam in NZ]

I remember GETTING our first TV, after months of walking to a neighbour's to watch theirs on Saturday nights (even though they weren't really friends).

I remember when The Sound of Music first came out.

Our car didn't even have wind-up windows, just a little glued-on knob on the glass that you used to push it up and down.

And if you think that makes ME sound old, my husband can remember taking a stone hot water bottle to bed!

[Shaay]

I loved Pong! I remember when there were Looney Tunes on Saturday mornings. And rollerskates for Saturday afternoons.

Anyone else remember Swatches? Captain Kangaroo? Romper Room?

I am so old that my first typewriter was manual, and my first "word processor" was made by Brother, weighed a ton, and used typewriter ribbons to print. But you could delete things!

I told me two year old that I had just "hung up" the phone...and then realized that she has never seen a wall phone that hangs up! No wonder she looked confused. It's a mobile phone world, baby!

[Jen]

Didn't Banana Republic at that time also have safari-like decor? It was weird.

I remember using payphones all the time and memorizing a collect call number so I could call home if I didn't have change on me.

I remember walking around with a comb in the back pocket of my jeans.

Potato chips at my elementary school were 15 cents.

I remember cheering for McGovern against Nixon outside the ballot box as my mom voted.

[Aimee Greeblemonkey]

I am a graphic designer who learned who to cut and paste type in college.

Nuff said.

[all things BD]

I remember playing outside all day long, in the fields across the street, and only having to check in when the street lights came on. When I was 8.

I remember my first tape walkman cost $80 and was the best gift I ever got to that point.

I remember roller skating rinks and coke in a bottle.

[mfk]

Wow this is awesome.

For my 6th birthday, I had a roller skating party at the roller rink. There was a disco ball and we did the hokey pokey. I got a green sparkly slap bracelet which was OMG SO COOL.

I had jelly shoes, and spandex shorts, and a skort, and multiple tunics/ leggings of assorted rainbow colors. Scrunchies galore.

Also had to beg and plead for call waiting... but mainly because my mom was and is still anti-tech. We only ever got two TV channels, NBC and PBS, which threw a wrench in my pop-culture awareness throughout the 80s and 90s. I hear I didn't miss much though :)

(25 years old)

[michele]

We used to crank call people on our rotary dial phone. This was before *69, you whippersnappers.

My most exciting purchase at about age 10 was a copy of Billy Joel's record album (yes, vinyl!) "Glass Houses"

When I worked as a travel writer I had to use tear sheets, which were basically the old edition of the book torn up and put on big pieces of paper, which I then reworked with all sorts of cool editing codes. BY HAND. WITH A PEN.

Then the next year I worked as an editor for the same travel guide and got to work on a MacIntosh Plus! Whoo-hoo!

The year after that, that travel guidebook was no more! I am the former employee of a defunct publication. How's that for old. Now get off my lawn.

[maleesha]

we paid $700 for our first microwave, then took it hope and cooked a rubbery egg in a coffee cup. Pure magic!